the blog for single, over-40 women

What I Learned About Singleness from a Field

by Tammie Fickas on April 29, 2014

A few years ago a trip took me to the small farming community in southern Indiana where my mother grew up. Grandpa was a farmer all his life. I am a city girl but, over the years, I have learned a little about farming.

With the end of the summer growing season, some of the fields were still full of their bounty while others had been harvested. All that remained in those harvested fields were the dried stalks of what was previously growing there. They were brown and seemed somewhat desolate. Not pretty at all.

I spent a week in the area and drove by one such harvested field as I came and went from the place I was staying. Every time I drove by, the words of a song came to mind. It was written by Roger Hutley, the music minister at the church I attended while living in Oregon. I can’t remember the whole song, but I do remember the song asking God to break up the fallow ground in my heart.

With these words running through my head, I began to think about those fields that would lay fallow for a season or more. This is a common practice in farming since it allows the soil to replenish itself of the nutrients that are depleted while crops are growing. Time is needed for nature to run its course and rebuild.

The fields don’t look pretty while they lay dormant. They lack the vibrancy and color of a crop in full bloom. We tend to think of the growing fields as more alive and active. Yet that’s not necessarily so. The rebuilding and replenishing is an active process and is just as important for the health of a crop.

Our lives are like fields. We have times of great produce and harvest. We blossom and grow. We have seasons where our days are productive and God is able to use us.

Don’t we wish our lives could look like that all the time?

But then we have months — even years — of dull, brown fallowness.

Sometimes our extended season of singleness can feel more like the fallow fields than the growing ones. But what we may see as dullness and lack of vibrancy may well be God replenishing and rebuilding us for His plans.

The seasons come and go in our lives just as in nature. We need both growth and rest to live a full Christian life. If your singleness makes you feel empty and lifeless, let God nurture and replenish you during this time.